Not an environmental scientist, but I am a scientist, accustomed to developing hypothesis and establishing the correctness or otherwise of same.
How many vast Ice sheets have cracked recently? I haven't heard of many. This may be a natural event, it's certainly on a scale we are not normally accustomed to envisaging. To definatelly point to a cause for a thing, it must be seen more then once, preferably many times. What if, for instance, Ice sheets crack constantly? Until the 19th century there was little interest in keeping an eye on Ice in the arctic, that's not much time for events on such a large scale to be observed.
Ice is melting all over the arctic it seems, and there are tentative links to global warming. However no-one has proven that these are not natural events slightly speeded up.
I'm not interested in getting the facts from whatever group can shout the loudest, or who succeeds in worrying the most people, I'm interested in knowing the precise cause, or combination of causes, before resorting to being scared to voice a variant opinion.
This is aside from my views on pollution. Even if it weren't allegedly messing with Ice sheets I'd still think pollution was a bad thing. I am very wary of jumping to conclusions though.
I don't know, but one event is not enough for a conclusion to be made. I know this is definatelly true.
This is not the same as saying I approve of global warming. I'm merely saying more data is required. I would be quite happy if the US and other lesser polluters stopped ripping into the ecosystem, but last I checked I'm not a global power, so I am unlikely to be able to stop anything the power hungry are doing.
I'm no environmental scientist, but surely there would need to be many such events measured before we could really start saying what caused it.
Is this a natural cycle? How long has this particular event been brewing? Have there been any other factors involved that can be discovered? These questions need to be answered before causes can be decided.
I am concerned about global warming, but I am also concerned about political motivations determining hypothesis, or special interest groups leaping on events and trumpeting them as being caused by their particular bugbear.
Such things do not good science make, and we need good science to get to grips with the causes of these events, lest we wander too far from the truth of it.
they used to, in the nineties this was all the rage. However the trend has come staggering to a halt as more and more large scale deployments fail.
What amused me was during the 2K bug crisis, after years of New Stuff being clamored about, and attempted forced obsolescence of old hardware, just how many organizations turned out to still have old Cobol systems installed in the back end of their New Stuff.
I won't be upgrading to Vista till I absolutely have to. I don't think this will be for a very long time, probably many years, as my main system is a Linux box, and my treasured cluster is a Gentoo system. XP is kept around for the few games I enjoy that need it. I'll likely upgrade when games manufacturers stop developing with support for XP. If Linux becomes a decent gaming platform before that then I may still not bother.
My son will be getting Vista next year in his new computer, and that will suit for my software testing purposes. I do need that aspect because the software I maintain is cross platform, even though the main branch is Linux. If he hadn't been getting that system I'd probably just rely on Vista owning friends for testing.
I think they had the right idea too. Life would be so much easier if the pc didn't have so many possible variations in hardware.
Alas, the real world doesn't work like that, or not since IBM released the pc spec they used for anyone to use.
My only problem with apple is the cost of their machines, and that just because I'm not overloaded with cash. Otherwise I'd own all macs. As it is I have to use many pc's for cluster work.
that would pitch them into a gui arms war that they would find hard to win, and the loss could cost them dearly.
Yes Apple have always had better stuff (or so I think), but microsoft have such a huge pot of cash to mis-inform/cajole potential buyers, that they wouldn't stand a chance in direct competition. Better to let things develop as they are, with Apples hardware getting an ever larger mindshare.
At last, we shall discover which aliens took elvis:-)
I can see what will happen though
govt: Here you go, everything we know about aliens, i.e, they haven't been here.
Conspiracists: Ah yes, but you'd say that wouldn't you...
govt: No really, it's true, look, it's got official stamps and everything.
Conspiracists: Well that may be so, but if we believe you, our million dollar book and convention industry will go down the pan [koff], ah no, we mean that you'll have succeeded in hiding the truth.
govt: ok, let us explain this again [sounds of guns being loaded]..
1: You voted them in, and don't be telling me you didn't know what they were like....
2: Probably nothing bar re-issue a passport so the RFID's own identifier is different. Not only that, how on earth could you prove the theft? And what identifying info is on this card? Enough for an identity theft? Probably no more then you or millions of other people stick in your trashcan on a weekly basis.
Mayhap you are correct. However the programmers involved will have gained enviable experience in systems coding, such as would be useful in VM creation, or console programming.
If it serves no more purpose then to advance the careers of the team involved, then it's done well.
You know what, I was wondering what had happened to that site. I didn't know it had been bought out, just that the place I used to go to for my tv guides had somehow disappeared.
A common misconception is that will could wreck the earths ability to sustain life, but this is wrong. The most we can do is wreck it's ability to sustain *us*.
Yes some animal species would go at the same time, but again Earth has bounced back from vast extinctions in the past. Indeed we emerged because of just such an event.
I spend a lot of my disposable income on books. The overwhelming majority of the books I buy are second hand, often over 30 years old, many over 50 (I'm a fan of old science fiction).
The idea of getting my books from a machine doesn't appeal one jot. I like to browse shelves and poke through boxes of books just arrived in my local secondhand bookshop.
It's a pleasant way to while away an hour, to select a nice looking book, get a coffee and sit in their reading area perusing my new find.
Vending machines in universities for textbooks perhaps, or chapters of books that students need (like that O'reilly scheme), yes, that I'd like, but not as a replacement of the bookstore, there's more to it then the product.
In fact cures *are* good for business, but they are staggeringly hard to create.
If you can cure a major disease with a drug, the monetary gains would be vast beyond imagining. A pill to cure cancer? You could charge whatever you liked, and a patent on that, well, it would be valuable beyond the dreams of avarice. Also curing instances is not the same as preventing occurances. Repeat instances would crop up all the time.
Did you know for instance that Garlic kills the HIV Virus outright? Stone dead on contact. The problem is that no-one knows which compound within Garlic is responsible, and most sticking the whole lot in someones bloodstream would kill them as well, in a rather horrible fashion. Just eating it has no effect. It would cost so much to discover which compound, or combinations of compounds is responsible that it's most likely easier not to bother and to try another, easier route (where easier is still bloody hard).
Nature's larder is full of things like this. The problem, by and large, is not finding things to kill disease, it's finding things that don't kill the person along with the disease.
I've still got a vhs recorder, tons of tapes, and a large library, recorded and bought. Plus I don't see any reduction in the places that I can buy tapes.
VHS isn't dead, nor will it be for a very long time. There's a big difference between DRM supporting companies wishing it would die, and it actually dying.
Incidentally, we have a record shop in town that does a brisk trade in the vinyl media that *ahem* 'died' a few years back....
I've looked at a lot of these images of screwed televisions and so on. It strikes me that the main problem is that people who normally spend their time sat down twiddling with buttons on controllers are so inept at normal exercise that they can't manage a simple thing like not chucking a controller.
It also occurs to me that some people sit glued to the news 24/7 trying to find another opportunity for a frivolous lawsuit that might net them an easy buck.
Slashdot Mirror
Not an environmental scientist, but I am a scientist, accustomed to developing hypothesis and establishing the correctness or otherwise of same.
How many vast Ice sheets have cracked recently? I haven't heard of many. This may be a natural event, it's certainly on a scale we are not normally accustomed to envisaging. To definatelly point to a cause for a thing, it must be seen more then once, preferably many times. What if, for instance, Ice sheets crack constantly? Until the 19th century there was little interest in keeping an eye on Ice in the arctic, that's not much time for events on such a large scale to be observed.
Ice is melting all over the arctic it seems, and there are tentative links to global warming. However no-one has proven that these are not natural events slightly speeded up.
I'm not interested in getting the facts from whatever group can shout the loudest, or who succeeds in worrying the most people, I'm interested in knowing the precise cause, or combination of causes, before resorting to being scared to voice a variant opinion.
This is aside from my views on pollution. Even if it weren't allegedly messing with Ice sheets I'd still think pollution was a bad thing. I am very wary of jumping to conclusions though.
I don't know, but one event is not enough for a conclusion to be made. I know this is definatelly true.
This is not the same as saying I approve of global warming. I'm merely saying more data is required. I would be quite happy if the US and other lesser polluters stopped ripping into the ecosystem, but last I checked I'm not a global power, so I am unlikely to be able to stop anything the power hungry are doing.
Such feeling aside, my point remains.
I'm no environmental scientist, but surely there would need to be many such events measured before we could really start saying what caused it.
Is this a natural cycle? How long has this particular event been brewing? Have there been any other factors involved that can be discovered? These questions need to be answered before causes can be decided.
I am concerned about global warming, but I am also concerned about political motivations determining hypothesis, or special interest groups leaping on events and trumpeting them as being caused by their particular bugbear.
Such things do not good science make, and we need good science to get to grips with the causes of these events, lest we wander too far from the truth of it.
they used to, in the nineties this was all the rage. However the trend has come staggering to a halt as more and more large scale deployments fail.
What amused me was during the 2K bug crisis, after years of New Stuff being clamored about, and attempted forced obsolescence of old hardware, just how many organizations turned out to still have old Cobol systems installed in the back end of their New Stuff.
I won't be upgrading to Vista till I absolutely have to. I don't think this will be for a very long time, probably many years, as my main system is a Linux box, and my treasured cluster is a Gentoo system. XP is kept around for the few games I enjoy that need it. I'll likely upgrade when games manufacturers stop developing with support for XP. If Linux becomes a decent gaming platform before that then I may still not bother.
My son will be getting Vista next year in his new computer, and that will suit for my software testing purposes. I do need that aspect because the software I maintain is cross platform, even though the main branch is Linux. If he hadn't been getting that system I'd probably just rely on Vista owning friends for testing.
Ever wondered what an iTunes store looks like while it burns? :-)
I think they had the right idea too. Life would be so much easier if the pc didn't have so many possible variations in hardware.
Alas, the real world doesn't work like that, or not since IBM released the pc spec they used for anyone to use.
My only problem with apple is the cost of their machines, and that just because I'm not overloaded with cash. Otherwise I'd own all macs. As it is I have to use many pc's for cluster work.
that would pitch them into a gui arms war that they would find hard to win, and the loss could cost them dearly.
Yes Apple have always had better stuff (or so I think), but microsoft have such a huge pot of cash to mis-inform/cajole potential buyers, that they wouldn't stand a chance in direct competition. Better to let things develop as they are, with Apples hardware getting an ever larger mindshare.
At last, we shall discover which aliens took elvis :-)
I can see what will happen though
govt: Here you go, everything we know about aliens, i.e, they haven't been here.
Conspiracists: Ah yes, but you'd say that wouldn't you...
govt: No really, it's true, look, it's got official stamps and everything.
Conspiracists: Well that may be so, but if we believe you, our million dollar book and convention industry will go down the pan [koff], ah no, we mean that you'll have succeeded in hiding the truth.
govt: ok, let us explain this again [sounds of guns being loaded]..
1: You voted them in, and don't be telling me you didn't know what they were like....
2: Probably nothing bar re-issue a passport so the RFID's own identifier is different. Not only that, how on earth could you prove the theft? And what identifying info is on this card? Enough for an identity theft? Probably no more then you or millions of other people stick in your trashcan on a weekly basis.
3: Because they made it legal....
Mayhap you are correct. However the programmers involved will have gained enviable experience in systems coding, such as would be useful in VM creation, or console programming.
If it serves no more purpose then to advance the careers of the team involved, then it's done well.
You know what, I was wondering what had happened to that site. I didn't know it had been bought out, just that the place I used to go to for my tv guides had somehow disappeared.
I've never played a single RPG DND or MMORG.
And yet I'm a unix coder. I must be a mutant
The dude jumps out of a plane with a homemade jetpack and flies around for six minutes, and you're not impressed?
Holy crap...
A common misconception is that will could wreck the earths ability to sustain life, but this is wrong. The most we can do is wreck it's ability to sustain *us*.
Yes some animal species would go at the same time, but again Earth has bounced back from vast extinctions in the past. Indeed we emerged because of just such an event.
Isn't there a colony of penguins in the northern hemisphere somewhere along the west coast of the america's?
ah, I see what you mean. Yes, that would be ok.
I do still like my old books, but Since I am a book addict anyhow, I guess I will be trying this thing out if it appears.
For textbooks I would be instantly enamored of it, seriously, I'd love it at my Uni, but for my personal book buying habits it would be horrible.
Half the fun is browsing for me.
I spend a lot of my disposable income on books. The overwhelming majority of the books I buy are second hand, often over 30 years old, many over 50 (I'm a fan of old science fiction).
The idea of getting my books from a machine doesn't appeal one jot. I like to browse shelves and poke through boxes of books just arrived in my local secondhand bookshop.
It's a pleasant way to while away an hour, to select a nice looking book, get a coffee and sit in their reading area perusing my new find.
Vending machines in universities for textbooks perhaps, or chapters of books that students need (like that O'reilly scheme), yes, that I'd like, but not as a replacement of the bookstore, there's more to it then the product.
unless there are very short books in the machine, and a public toilet nearby...
Well, at least it would be use of a sort, nice soft pages mmmm.
In fact cures *are* good for business, but they are staggeringly hard to create.
If you can cure a major disease with a drug, the monetary gains would be vast beyond imagining. A pill to cure cancer? You could charge whatever you liked, and a patent on that, well, it would be valuable beyond the dreams of avarice. Also curing instances is not the same as preventing occurances. Repeat instances would crop up all the time.
Did you know for instance that Garlic kills the HIV Virus outright? Stone dead on contact. The problem is that no-one knows which compound within Garlic is responsible, and most sticking the whole lot in someones bloodstream would kill them as well, in a rather horrible fashion. Just eating it has no effect. It would cost so much to discover which compound, or combinations of compounds is responsible that it's most likely easier not to bother and to try another, easier route (where easier is still bloody hard).
Nature's larder is full of things like this. The problem, by and large, is not finding things to kill disease, it's finding things that don't kill the person along with the disease.
You may well be right, but
"It's multiparadigm: supporting imperative, object oriented, and template metaprogramming styles"
Is just too geeky for me before my second cup of coffee.
I've still got a vhs recorder, tons of tapes, and a large library, recorded and bought. Plus I don't see any reduction in the places that I can buy tapes.
VHS isn't dead, nor will it be for a very long time. There's a big difference between DRM supporting companies wishing it would die, and it actually dying.
Incidentally, we have a record shop in town that does a brisk trade in the vinyl media that *ahem* 'died' a few years back....
I've looked at a lot of these images of screwed televisions and so on. It strikes me that the main problem is that people who normally spend their time sat down twiddling with buttons on controllers are so inept at normal exercise that they can't manage a simple thing like not chucking a controller.
It also occurs to me that some people sit glued to the news 24/7 trying to find another opportunity for a frivolous lawsuit that might net them an easy buck.
you crazy foo!
strictly speaking lyx doesn't count either. It also renders many web page elements that only exist because of graphical browsers.